American Idol took a stab at establishing indie cred Wednesday night with a music video of the contestants butchering Modest Mouse’s “Float On.” None of them, of course, were a match for I-Bro. Next week, another selection from the Mouse house, “Satin in a Coffin:” “Are you dead or are you sleeping?/ God, I sure hope you are dead.”

No one is ever really dead in science fiction and fantasy. Star Trek even made a whole movie undoing the noble death of one of its main characters. Maybe that’s a reason Kara “Starbuck” Thrace’s death on Battlestar Galactica this week was not nearly as moving as it made itself out to be. The show has already told us several times that it has five more Cylon models on standby for future plot twists and references throughout the episode to Starbuck’s “special destiny” made it clear that she’ll be back, provided, of course, Katee Sackhoff doesn’t decide to focus her energies on her burgeoning direct-to-DVD career.

The writers may have thought they were being edgy by killing off one of the main characters, but they really took the coward’s way out, much like Starbuck, who, visions of her dead mother or not, basically committed suicide. In the first season or so of Battlestar Galactica, Starbuck was the main character. The tug she felt between her father figure, Commander Adama, and her mother figure, President Roslin, together with her near-incestuous relationship with Apollo, represented the central conflict of the show. Now in the third year, though, Roslin and Adama have long since made nice and the writers have decided to carry the torch for the fallen Aaron Sorkin and focus on the political and theological themes of the show. To do this, they need to use less-developed characters that they can mold to whatever the political theme of the episode is, like, most recently, Chief Tyrol and Helo. So, Starbuck is out, or at least recast as a Cylon. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apollo was far behind.

I wouldn’t say Battlestar Galactica has jumped the shark, but it’s definitely reached that point where a great show starts coasting on the good will and loyalty of its fans.

During Smith’s too-short run this fall, the main criticism leveled against it was that it was hard to root for characters that were thieves and murderers. I don’t believe the point of watching TV should be to root for against any characters, but, apparently, it’s something people do.

NBC’s new drama The Black Donnellys, about a thuggish quartet of brothers in Hell’s Kitchen, probably won’t run into the same problem. Smith’s main character was played by craggy, middle-aged Ray Liotta. The Donnellys, on the other hand, are the Backstreet Boys of crime. They’re young, pretty, and each of them has a defining character trait: the leader, the gambler, the lady’s man, and the bad boy. Besides, their motivation has more to do with preserving the family than greed. This, the show borrowed from The Godfather. The rest is straight out of Goodfellas: narration, flashbacks, and period music.

The pilot, which aired Monday and again Thursday, was pretty cutting-edge for network TV. There was drug use and murder at point-blank range. Still, though, substituting the Irish for the Italians doesn’t make it fresh enough to be something we haven’t seen done before, and better, on the big screen.

The Black Donnellys is an improvement over Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, but once The Sopranos kicks off its final season in April, the crime show to watch won’t be anywhere near a broadcast network.

ABC is turning the Geico Caveman ads into a TV series. I think they’re the most consistently funny commercials on TV right now, but I don’t expect it to be a great show stretched over a half hour. Maybe if they keep the original actors. Is there a more devastating phrase in the English language now than “with the mango salsa?”

I confess I liked the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, but, after a few episodes, opted for CSI:Miami instead. Now the show’s on hiatus, and some are saying it won’t come back.

The reasons are obvious: while Studio 60 had a good premise and two great lead actors, it quickly became preachy and political, and when it wasn’t, it focused too heavily on relationships between characters who had no chemistry. The first season of Studio 60 was like the last season of a great show that has been on two years too long.

It’s not that CSI:Miami is better—from a critical perspective—than Studio 60, but Horatio is steady as a rock. Studio 60 was a sinking ship from the second episode.

Taking its place will be The Black Donnellys, a drama about Irish hoodlums in New York City. Organized crime pays off big at the movies and on HBO, now we’ll see how it does on a profanity-free network.

Sex. Drugs. Intestinal parasites. Dirt’s got all your favorite vices. The most interesting subplot on the FX drama turned out to be nothing more than a case of bad sushi, not some new-fangled way the celebs are getting high. TV writers really ought to plan these things out ahead of time.

This show feels like a work in progress. Good thing it’s on cable, where low ratings are tolerable. The premise—behind the scenes at a tabloid—is promising, but it’s held back by lazy writing and flat acting, especially by Josh Stewart, as a troubled, worm-infested actor, and Courteney Cox as the tabloid editor.

Cox was one of the top Friends, but she needs to spend some more time playing characters that aren’t Monica Gellar before she can pull off the stone-cold-bitch act. Perhaps, together, she and Jennifer Aniston can come up with something.

On the bright side is Ian Hart as a schizophrenic photographer. Also, Paul Reubens’s two-episode appearance as a weary, drunk reporter was actually pretty good.

Dirt could still pull itself together by the end of the season, but, if it doesn’t, next year, for sleaze done right, FX should just give us a double dose of Nip/Tuck.

Turner Broadcasting System has agreed to pay $2 million for what happened last week in Boston. There’s no official word yet on where the money’s going to come from, but rumor has it Turner will take it out of the budget of My Boys. According to some sources, most of the cast will be replaced by Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, who work for cheap and are funnier. This arrangement will also satisfy the public’s desire to punish the duo.

Three days since zero hour and things are starting to stabilize. Tuner Broadcasting has offered to compensate Boston and the other affected cities for their trouble, unnecessarily, I think. In the newsroom where I work, we are sent daily the logs of the various police departments in our area. Judging from them, a large amount—the largest amount—of the work the police does is investigating reports that turn out to be nothing. What law enforcement agencies did Wednesday was their job and what they’re there for. Turner is not responsible for those costs. Now, if the company wants to pay, it’s the company’s money, and it can do what it wants with it.

As for the nearly-racist treatment of the two “suspects” by some in Boston, I think it’s shameful. I’m usually not one to go blabbering on about what it means to be an American, but I do think it has something to do with judging people (in the legal sense) only by the law, not by their attitude, appearance, personality, nationality, or, most importantly, taste in TV shows.

The second day of mass hysteria continues in Boston, except we’re no longer afraid of a cartoon character, we’re angry at a couple of harmless artsy-fartsy types for making us afraid of a cartoon character.

I was surprised so many people hadn’t heard of Aqua Teen Hunger Force before all this happened. It’s too bad the devices in questions weren’t promoting a better show that could use the help. I think I could probably build one of those things. It looks like it’s just a couple of batteries attached to some light bulbs.

Who’s on board for planting some bombs on behalf of Veronica Mars?

Can a cartoon character bring a whole city to a halt? One did today, in Boston. Now, some guy’s going to take the fall because these other guys don’t watch enough late-night TV to know the difference between this and this. Don’t believe that’s possible? Take a look at them again. Not exactly the most with-it group.

Now, I don’t like Adult Swim’s advertising that much either. I find its little in-between-episode cards annoying and self-consciously ironic, but, you see, I’ve learned something today.

Adult Swim has shown us that a canceled show can be revived if people like it enough and that one anime show in a million (Cowboy Bebop) is actually pretty good. Now, Adult Swim has shown us one more thing: that people will be afraid of basically anything.

Thank you, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Thank you.